20 Years Later, Safer Kids Are Adam Walsh's Legacy

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Twenty years ago, his name came over a loudspeaker at the Sears store in Hollywood: "Adam Walsh, please come to customer service."

Who in the shopping aisles on that July day in 1981 would have recognized the name of the lost 6-year-old? Who in South Florida, or across the nation, would not at least turn an ear to such an announcement today?

Two decades after Adam was abducted and his severed head was found in a Vero Beach canal, his name is synonymous with the missing-children's movement.

His father, John Walsh, is a national celebrity with his anti-crime television show and his tireless work to change how America looks at and for missing children. The image of Adam's gaptoothed smile is stamped on child-safety literature across the nation. His legacy has touched institutions from law enforcement to public architecture to business policy to Congress.

"Everyone remembers the story, and it doesn't matter what part of the country you're in," said Debbie Coller, a vice president with Boca Raton-based Sensormatic, a corporate sponsor of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "What happened with Adam Walsh in South Florida 20 years ago created a cultural change across America."

CHANGE IN PUBLIC PLACES

On July 27, 1981, Adam's mother took him to the Hollywood Mall to do some shopping. They were in the Sears store, where a few other kids had gathered in front of a video game in the toy department. Pac-Man was a new fascination.

Reve Walsh let Adam stay and watch while she shopped a few aisles away. When she returned, he and the other children were gone. She began calling his name. She approached other shoppers. She told a security guard. After more than half an hour, they made a fruitless "come to customer service" announcement to a 6-year-old.

"Cash registers kept ringing up sales. Clerks kept waiting on people as if nothing had happened," Reve described in John Walsh's book Tears of Rage. "I was trying to think of the words to make them see that something was really out of whack. That something was going on that just wasn't right. I couldn't just go up to the counter and say, `I have a missing child,' because in those days, there was no such thing."

Almost twice a month in the summer of 2001, a "Code Adam" alert comes over the speaker system at the Wal-Mart store on West Sunrise Boulevard. The announcement, named after Adam Walsh, means a child has been reported missing in the store.

The employees know their roles. A brief description of the child is announced and they all stop their work to look. Some are assigned to immediately watch all exits to make sure the child doesn't leave the store.

Within 10 minutes, if the child is not found or is seen with someone other than a parent or guardian, the local police department is called.

Created in 1993 by Wal-Mart employees, the Code Adam program is used at 15,000 stores across the country including The Gap, Home Depot, Kmart and Office Max.

"The awareness that [the Walsh case] brought is immeasurable," says Sharon Weber, spokeswoman for Wal-Mart nationwide. "There's much more responsibility expected of corporations now than 20 years ago. People are much more concerned about missing children. Everyone is more vigilant."

In 2001, nearly every retail outlet has surveillance cameras recording who comes and goes through its doors. Nearly every large mall has computerized parking-lot cameras, some so sophisticated they can pick up license-plate numbers.

At Chuck E. Cheese's pizza playgrounds nationwide, parents and children get their hands stamped with matching numbers when they arrive and are checked when they leave to make sure the right child leaves with the right adult.

Architects design school buildings with single points of entry to help safeguard children and keep strangers off the premises. On field trips, children wear color-coded T-shirts. Fingerprinting programs for children and even DNA samplings are common. Movie star Jamie Lee Curtis is the spokeswoman for a Ford Motor Co. campaign to distribute child-identification kits to keep kids safe.

The heightened awareness follows two decades of missing-children images on billboards, milk cartons, shopping bags and advertising fliers. After the Adam Walsh case, entrepreneurs even made a profit selling leashlike child restraints to a nervous public.

Yet the raw numbers refuse to diminish. In 2000, the FBI estimates 750,000 juveniles were reported missing. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children estimates that 3,200 to 4,600 of those were abductions by strangers.

"There have been tremendous reactive changes. But the behaviors of people haven't changed," says social scientist Martin L. Forst, author of Missing Children: Rhetoric and Reality.